Year 1
Welcome to Year 1
In Year One we have Miss Cohen, Mrs. Laycock, and our 30 wonderful Year One learners.
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Our Curriculum in Year 1
At St. Mary’s we go above and beyond to ensure that the firm foundations of knowledge are put in place in order for our children to achieve their full potential actively, creatively and holistically.
We have built our curriculum so that it is sequential so that children’s learning can build both depth and breadth ; it is purposeful in order to make learning here meaningful for children living in Rothwell whilst being spiritual at all times in order to fit with our Catholic Ethos Statement.
Year One
Our latest news
Class of 2021/2022
Autumn One Newsletter: newsletter A1
Art- We have been studying local artist Burley Banksy and he was so kind to come and do work with our class and show us his style. We are so lucky to have such a talented artist who went to our school.
Maths- We were very busy sorting objects this week. We sorted objects by colour, shape and size.
Science- We are learning the parts of our bodies. We looked at all the bones and learned the names for these. We worked as a team to build our own skeleton and got to hold a real skull.
2020-2021
Science- Bowland’s Farm Visit
The children had a wonderful day learning about the different farm animals and how we can look after them. We had lots of fun getting to know the animals and feeding them!
STEM week
Year One have really enjoyed STEM week. We focused on the inventor and engineer Granville T Woods. We enjoyed researching all about his life and recording our research in different ways. We talked about his impact on technology today and used green screen and IMovie to present our research. We worked in groups to complete our own rollercoaster STEM challenge which involved designing, creating and evaluating our own rollercoaster structures to carry a ping pong ball. We were blown away by their creativity and team work! Well done Year One!
We have absolutely loved exploring our new Woodland Area this term! We worked together brilliantly to help build the geodome and this was very exciting! During Holy Week, we used sticks and string to make our own Easter crosses. We learnt that perseverance was key for this task and we used fantastic team work. We have also enjoyed having our behaviour reward time in the woodland area and had a lovely time drinking hot chocolate, singing, listening to and acting out some of our favourite stories!
Back together again!
What a wonderful week Year One have had back together again! We have had an exciting week and have enjoyed catching up with each other and having lots of fun! We are very happy to have our Year One family back together in the classroom again!
Science
Year 1 have been busy planting bulbs for our new enquiry question ‘What do bulbs need to grow?’. We will be observing them closely and seeing how they grow under different conditions. We will also been observing how the change in seasons will affect their growth. Well done Year 1 scientists!
Year 1 have been very busy planning and writing instructions on how to make a clay hedgehog this week. We then used our instructions to make our hedgehogs!
Geography
In Geography Year 1 have made a fantastic start with their learning all about or local area, Rothwell. We started our topic by suggesting which questions we would like to find answers to and began to understand where we live (which suburb, city, county, country and continent). We then moved onto learning about what maps are and their uses. We looked at the similarities and differences between maps and learnt all about what an ‘aerial view’ is. We had lots of fun finding our school on google maps and worked together to find different features on the map. We then used a map to locate places within our school grounds. We set off to find them making sure we used directional language to find them. We did a fantastic job using our Geography skills!
Science
In Science Year 1 have been busy planning their next enquiry which is ‘How does a tree change across the seasons?’ As a class, we chose the tree we will be observing throughout the year. We discussed that it was a deciduous tree because it has already lost some leaves. We thought about how we can ensure that we observe the tree closely and record our findings. We are going to take photos of the tree each month to see how it changes. Our Year 1 scientists have been working very hard!
Year One have been busy this week painting poppies for our Remembrance Day wreaths. We talked about the importance of remembering those who fought for us in the war. We then worked very hard to use paint to create poppies out of plastic bottles. The wreaths were then placed outside our school gates. Well done Year One!
History
To end our first History topic on ‘Ourselves and Families’ Year One have been presenting their research they have collected when looking at what our parents and grandparents childhood was like. We decided which questions we would like to ask them and then recorded our research in different ways. Year One did a fantastic job presenting their work confidently to the rest of the class. Well done to you all and a big thank you to parents and grandparents for your help with this!
In Science this week we have been thinking about Autumn. Our new enquiry will be observing the same tree throughout the year to see how it changes. We started by searching outside for any signs of Autumn we can already see and worked together to create a picture collage of what we found!
English- Poetry
This week the children have written some fantastic poems using similes all about themselves! We looked at what similes were and how they can be used to add excitement to our writing. We planned our poems and then wrote them using our very best handwriting! They were so lovely that we decided to make them into our own Year 1 poetry book to add to our reading corner. Some children volunteered to read their poem to the rest of the class using their loud and clear voices. They were fantastic, well done Year One!
Computing
This week in Year One we have been using our computational thinking skills and began to learn about algorithms. We talked about algorithms as being sequences and the importance of the sequence being clear and precise. The children enjoyed giving Miss Drury the robot instructions on how to travel from one area of the classroom to another but quickly realised they needed their instructions to be more accurate! We talked about ‘debugging’ as being where errors have occurred in our sequence. We then used our computational skills to give our partners key instructions on how to rebuild a lego model. We made sure we were clear and precise with our instructions. Well done Year One!
Science
This weeks Science enquiry has been on finding out how the weather changes in Autumn. We started by thinking about different types of weather and created our own weather reports to describe the weather clearly. We then made predictions on the rainfall, temperature and wind strength. We learnt about the different parts of our own weather station and how they help us to record the weather. We then observed the weather over a week and recorded our results. We have really enjoyed being Scientists and observing the weather changes carefully, well done Year One!
RE
We have been thinking about The Creation story and have been using role play to retell the story in groups. We thought about the importance of looking after God’s beautiful world and everyone and everything in it. We listened carefully to the story of Noah’s Ark and thought about its important message. We responded to the story by using watercolours to paint our own Noah’s Ark pictures. We created a story map as a class and enjoyed taking turns to retell the story.
Year One have had a fantastic start to their new school year! I am so proud of how the children have come back to school and adapted to their new environment so well. They have already shown their motivation and excitement for learning and we are very excited for the year ahead! Well done to you all, you should be very proud of yourselves!
Dot day!
Wow, what a fantastic day we had in Year One! We had a full day of art and using our amazing creative skills. We started the day by looking at our story ‘The Dot’ about a little girl who thinks she can’t draw. We talked about the message of the story and how we are all artists! Our class colour was green and we had lots of fun painting dots throughout the day. We enjoyed following an online drawing tutorial and creating out own collaborative art outside. What a wonderful day!
This week we have fully immersed ourselves in our new class text ‘Funny bones’. We have enjoyed reading the story, writing sentences to match pictures from our story and creating our own illustrations and captions for our own class version of the story. We have labelled the parts of our body and met our own class skeleton! We practised using the different parts of our body to run, skip and enjoy dancing. We then made our own moving skeletons. We have had a super week!
R.E and Computing
This week we began our new R.E topic ‘God’s Great Plan’. We started by discussing God’s world and enjoyed sharing our favourite things and what we love most about the world. We talked about the blue sky, the trees, flowers, waterfalls, sunsets, family and friends. We then used our computing skills and worked in pairs to take photos of God’s beautiful world outside. We learnt the words ‘portrait’ and ‘landscape’ and practised our computing skills using the Ipads! We had lots of fun!
Maths
We have been very busy in Maths this week. We have been sorting, counting and representing numbers using different concrete resources, numbers and words. We have looked at the number 11 this week and thought about how many tens and ones are in the number and practised showing this number using resources to make our own concept maps as well as drawing pictures.
Music
The children have had their very first Year One music lesson this week and they had a fantastic time using different instruments!
Class of 2019/2020
Reading Week
For reading week we focused on ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ by Julia Donaldson. We began by using our inference skills when looking at pictures of the farm at the beginning and at the end of the story. We talked about what was different and discussed why. Well done Year One!
On Tuesday we came into school to find that our frog prize pot had been taken from our classroom and had only clues left to help us find out who had taken it! We looked at the adjectives used in the story and thought about how we could use adjectives to create our own wanted posters to find whoever had taken it! The wanted posters were fantastic and definitely worked as our frog prize pot was returned the next day. Super work Year One!
On Thursday we had a dress up day and the children looked fantastic!
On Friday, we had a fantastic workshop on Fairytales and Dragons. We really enjoyed watching the fantastic performance of a fairytale. All of the puppets and props were made from recycled items! We then worked in small groups to create our own worlds for where we would like our fairytale to be set. We came up with some fantastic ideas and really used our imaginations to build them!
Science
After discussing what we think we could grow on the farm in ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ we looked closely at our new Science topic, plants. We discussed what plants were and what they needed to grow. We looked closely at instructions for planting beans and sequenced these in order. We gathered the equipment we would need and planted our own individual beans which we will be keeping a very close eye on as they grow!
Maths
Continuing our work on place value we have been looking at representing numbers to 50. We used different manipulatives to represent given numbers up to 50 and tell our partners how many tens and ones we could see.
History- Kings and Queens
To end our learning on Kings and Queens we had an exciting theme day. We dressed up as Royalty and played the parts of Kings and Queens all day. We talked about what the crown symbolised today and through history. We then made our own and they were fantastic! We also learnt about the coat of arms and what it represents and created our designs. We wrote our own Royal Invitations for our Royal Tea Party that we enjoyed in the afternoon. What a lovely day we had!
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- Our Royal Banquet Hall
RE- Collective Worship
Year One children led a beautiful collective worship on ‘Love’ this week. We each thought of a way that we could show love and drew or wrote this on hearts. We ended our worship by laying these in the worship circle and reflecting on this.
Maths
In Maths we have been investigating how many number bonds to 20 there are. We used a systematic approach to help us find them all!
Science
We have continued to look at everyday materials in our Science lessons. We investigated which material would be most suitable for making a house for the three little pigs. We used a variety of materials (bricks, lego, straws, clay, matchsticks) to investigate!
We have enjoyed investigating which materials would be most suitable for making an umbrella for our class teddy, Hattie. We talked about ensuring our method is fair and enjoyed making predictions. We tested plastic, kitchen roll, cling film and tin foil. We used our new vocabulary (absorbent, non- absorbent, waterproof and not waterproof) to describe the materials.
Year One have had a fantastic start to the new term, they have settled back wonderfully into school routines. Here is some of the learning we have been doing this week.
Maths
In Maths we have been continuing with place value with a focus on numbers eleven to twenty. We worked in pairs to build our own number line in numbers and words. We talked about how the numbers change and which digit changes as the numbers get bigger. We have continued to use our fantastic reasoning skills.
History
Our History topic this term is ‘Kings and Queens’. We introduced our topic by acting out our own Coronation. We looked at some Kings and Queens from the past and used sources to try and guess how long ago they were King or Queen. We talked about new vocabulary (Monarch, Coronation, reign) and what these words mean.
Science
Our new topic in Science this term is Everyday Materials. To start with we looked closely at objects made from different materials and investigated which materials they were made from. We added labels to the objects and discussed why a certain material had been used. We introduced new vocabulary (flexible, transparent) to describe the materials and their properties.
English
In English we have started our new story ‘Lost and Found’ which is a lovely story about friendship. The children have been using their talk for writing actions to retell the story beautifully. We then made our own story maps and used these to tell the story to the rest of the class. We then used these to support us with our written retell of the story where the children chose their own character.
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- Using our whole class story map to retell the story
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- Re-telling the story using a story map
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- Re-telling the story using a story map
RE- Advent
As we began Advent last week we each shared our Advent promises that we then added to our classroom display. We discussed how we prepare for Christmas and thought about what each of the candles on our Advent wreath represents. We used oil pastels to create our own Advent wreath pictures.
Geography and Computing
In Geography we have been looking at our local area of Rothwell. After looking closely at Rothwell on a map we then used Ipads to research the key features of our local area.
English
Year One have been editing experts this week! They have been doing a fantastic job of spotting spelling and punctuation mistakes. We have been using these skills within our own writing and really working hard to read our own work back to check it. Well done Year One!
Science
For our Seasonal Changes topic in Science we have been discussing the difference in day length throughout the seasons. We focused on shadow length and talked about why our shadows are sometimes longer or shorter. We really enjoyed making our own shadow puppets to test out!
Music week- 80’s theme!
On Friday we welcomed a visitor to school who taught us how to play the drums. The drums were from Brazil and we learnt how to play them loudly, quietly, fast and slow. We learnt the many different sounds you can make using just one drum. We learnt about rhythm, pitch and tempo. We enjoyed making animal sounds with our drums as well as learning a call and response music sequence that we performed for parents in the afternoon. It was a fantastic day!
On Tuesday we had our own 80’s disco!
We started off our music week by learning some eighties songs and dance routines. We took it in turns to perform songs from the eighties using a variety of musical instruments. We had lots of fun dancing!
The children loved wearing their eighties clothes for our music themed week! They all looked absolutely fantastic! Thank you all for the hard work that has gone into their outfits!
Art
We have been using our talk for writing skills this week to learn a set of instructions on how to make a clay hedgehog. After writing our instructions we used them to create our own hedgehogs!
RE- Collective Worship
The children led a beautiful class worship focusing on Remembrance Day. We thought about the importance of remembering the soldiers who died to keep us safe and how we can be kind and care for others. At the end the children laid their poppies that they had made throughout the week.
Geography
To start our ‘Home Sweet Home’ topic Year one have started by identifying common features on maps. We discussed where we might find maps and why we use them. We talked about how maps can show small or large areas from room plans to world maps. We then worked together to create a plan of our own classroom.
Maths
Year One have been very busy again this week in Maths. They have been creating number sentences and representing them in different ways. Well done Year One!
Music
This week we welcomed visitors into school to help teach us about music. We enjoyed watching a fantastic performance of Skylar’s Missing Note. It was a musical story all about a girl called Skylar and her piano. A note went missing from the piano but Skylar was still able to enjoy playing her piano and even found different ways to create music. After the performance we enjoyed a music workshop where we created our own music using our voices and learnt about pitch, tempo, dynamics and rhythm. What a wonderful morning!
History
To end our history topic ‘Ourselves and Families’ the children brought in their family tree projects to share with the class. We were blown away with the hard work that had gone into them. We enjoyed sharing our family trees and hearing about each others families.
Science- Signs of Autumn
Year One have enjoyed trying to find signs of Autumn this week!
Reading
We loved visiting our new library and having a read of our new wonderful books!
Maths
We have continued to use our number skills when ordering numbers in both numerals and words this week.
Science
In Science, we have been learning all about Seasonal Changes. We have really enjoyed using our art skills to represent the changes in trees across the four seasons.
English
We have really enjoyed learning our new class story ‘Peace at Last’. We enjoyed using story maps and talk for writing to help us learn the story. Year One were fantastic with their talk for writing skills and have used their actions to help them with their writing. Well done Year One!
RE- God’s Great Plan
In RE we have been talking about the world that God created for us. We enjoyed talking about our favourite things about God’s beautiful world. We each drew something that we loved about God’s world and added these to our cross.
Maths
Year 1 have had a very busy first week! They have been superstars in Maths and have been practicing their counting by putting objects into groups. Well done Year 1!
English
We really enjoyed listening to our new class story ‘Funnybones’. We worked in groups and used actions to perform some parts of the story. Fantastic Year 1!
Class of 2018/19
Sports Day May 2019
Our topic this term is safari! We have been learning about the culture and climate in Kenya in our topic lessons; wild animals in science; tribal African patterns and pots in art; and traditional Tinga tales in literacy.
In Year One, we have refurbished our reading area! The children decorated butterflies, chose their favourite books to write on parcel tags and we sorted through our class books. We can now use the area as a wonderful, calm treat for children!
We recently held our Year One class assembly, celebrating Mary in the month of May. We talked about Mary’s love and care for her son, Jesus, and the children related this to their own mummies!
This half term, Year One have been enjoying weekly visits from Miko, the therapy dog! She loves to listen to children read.
Spring 2:
Everyone in Year One enjoyed getting dressed up for World Book Day this year! We focused our costumes and learning on our class topic, Space! Our classroom was transformed and we even had a giant Solar System model! We wrote space poetry, which we performed in a class recital.
Autumn 2: At the end of last half term and the beginning of this one, we have been exploring numbers to 10! Here is some of the super group work we did when finding number bonds to 10 in different ways!
Information about Planning
Planning for 2021- 2022
Long Term PlanLong term plan 2021-2022
Autumn 1:
Home Sweet Home –medium term plan – A1 Y1
RE planning –Gods Great Plan
Helping at Home
End of year expectations:
To support parents in knowing what is expected of Year 1 pupils at the end of the year, we have put links below to documents which detail in child speak. These are here as an aid to support and give guidance only.
Reading & Spoken Language Band 1 Pupil –
Science Band 1 Pupil – Writing
Following our Maths information evening for parents, we have shared some useful documents to see how Maths is taught in school. The most effective way for you to help would be to practice the ‘progression in number facts’ and times tables.
Parents’ Information Evening Nov 18
Rothwell St Mary’s Calculation Policy
Useful phonics links to access:
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/advice-for-parents/reading-at-home/phonics-made-easy/
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk
The Geraldine the Giraffe videos on you tube are a useful resource for your child to watch. We sometimes use these within the classroom.
Websites to access at home to help with your child’s learning:
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk
https://www.topmarks.co.uk
https://play.numbots.com/#/intro
Here is a useful video to help with the correct articulation of phonemes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s
Homework
Spellings
Please find below the spellings we will be looking at over the Autumn half term. If you would like to do any extra practise at home it is really beneficial to practise using the spellings within sentences. This encourages the children to use the correct spelling when writing independently.
Please find below the list of Year 1 common exception words should you wish to practise these with your child at home.